Washington -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- There will be plenty of legacy items by which to judge President Barack Obama .

Obamacare , for instance : Whether the new law that seeks health insurance for every American is a prudent piece of policy or an albatross of government overreach is a matter of opinion . How about drawing down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ? What about his efforts to police suspected terrorists abroad through the use of deadly drone strikes ?

None of these , in the long run , might be as important as his efforts to help the economy , which , ironically , has felt stronger just as Americans ' faith in Obama to steer it has dwindled .

According to a Pew Research Center poll from November , just 31 % of Americans approve of the way he is handling the economy .

By one measure , the Obama economy is almost back to par . If he 's lucky , the economy might be able to save his second term .

`` It 's impossible to tell the future , '' said Julian Zelizer , a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton who has written about presidents and their legacies for CNN . `` If the economy moves in a positive direction and in the next two years we are really out of the sluggish economy that he started his presidency with , people will value that . ''

What sort of value remains to be seen .

The short-memory syndrome

Certainly , handing off a good economy would help his long-term legacy . In the short term , there seems to be little appetite among Republicans on Capitol Hill for some of his legislative priorities like raising the minimum wage or passing an immigration reform bill .

An emboldened president would enter those negotiations with a stronger hand . He 'd also have more power to sway budget negotiations that could affect future spending on social programs such as Medicare and Social Security .

Stephen Weatherford , a political science professor at the University of California , Santa Barbara , said Americans have short memories .

`` To a kind of ironic extent , if presidents come in facing big problems and they 're able to do something to solve those problems , people do n't evaluate them based on those problems , '' he said .

`` It becomes a kind of , ` What have you done for me lately ? ' problem , '' said Weatherford , who thinks Obama 's domestic legacy will be focused squarely on the health care law .

`` I think if the health care law is in place and works , he 'll be remembered really favorably , '' said Weatherford , comparing the law to the Great Society social programs enacted by President Lyndon Johnson .

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7 % in November . It 's an imperfect measure for the health of the economy . People long unemployed and who are n't looking for work are n't counted , for example . But that 's the lowest unemployment rate since Obama was first elected president , when the rate sat at 6.8 % .

In hindsight , that 6.8 % figure from 2008 seems low , either because Americans at the time were used to much lower jobless rates or because in the time since then we 've become used to much higher rates . In 2008 , the economic ground was rumbling with talk of the potential for an economic apocalypse .

The unemployment rate grew a full percentage point in the 2 1/2 months between his election that year and his inauguration in January 2009 , and it peaked a little less than a year into his presidency at 10 % in October 2009 .

Now we call it the Great Recession , something much worse than your father 's recession but probably not quite as bad as your grandfather 's Great Depression .

The U.S. government took an activist approach to saving the economy . It began pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into bailouts of the banking and auto industries in the final days of the Bush administration . The Federal Reserve was just beginning to pump trillions of dollars into the economy through a menu of bond-buying programs and artificially low interest rates .

Taking an approach , running with it

Obama took this activist approach and ran with it . He spent a good portion of his new political capital passing a nearly $ 800 billion stimulus program opposed by all but three Republicans in the Senate .

The rollout of the stimulus , by the way , was beset by a flawed website and created a huge political headache as those hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars flooded into the economy -- the effect was not immediately felt by everyone and it was hard to quantify as it was spread across years .

Even if the recovery is felt most prominently in the coming years , it could affect perception of those early programs , Zelizer said .

`` If the last two years of the Obama presidency are filled with a possibility economy , it 's going to change the way we view the stimulus and his other economic programs , '' he said .

Temporary increases to food stamps authorized by the stimulus package only ran out at the beginning of November . Temporary increases in unemployment insurance are set to run out at the end of this year . The ultimate effect of billions spent on infrastructure had a short-term effect on jobs , but will also have long-term benefits .

Continued growth will come with growing pains . Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke or his soon-to-be successor Janet Yellen are expected to taper off the Fed programs that have helped buoy the back end of the economy and kept interest rates down .

The Congressional Budget Office guessed that the stimulus kept the unemployment rate 2 % lower than it otherwise would have been in 2010 . That means the country could have faced 12 % unemployment instead of 10 % at the height of the Great Recession , but we 'll never know for sure .

What we do know is that the national debt skyrocketed as the federal government spent furiously to save the economy . The stimulus cost $ 830 billion , according to the CBO . Deficits have started to shrink as the economy has improved and Republicans in Congress have insisted on spending cuts . But the debt now stands at nearly $ 17 trillion .

America 's Debt : CNN Money special section

A Wall Street rally ; a widening divide

But while the stock market has rallied during the Obama presidency -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average has nearly doubled during his time in office -- the divide between wealthy and struggling Americans has grown exponentially .

Potentially rising interest rates and less help for the unemployed and the hungry as those stimulus programs run out could exacerbate the problem , which Obama has made clear will be a focus of his remaining time in office .

`` I believe this is the defining challenge of our time : Making sure our economy works for every working American . It 's why I ran for President . It was at the center of last year 's campaign , '' Obama told a liberal group during a speech in an economically depressed area of Washington , D.C. , on Wednesday . `` It drives everything I do in this office . And I know I 've raised this issue before , and some will ask why I raise the issue again right now . ''

He later added that he think the government should be spending money to invest in creating opportunities for Americans .

`` A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit , '' he said .

After his re-election , Obama extended Bush-era tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans , making good on his campaign effort to make them pay a little more in the coming years .

The economy for years has been the issue that Americans want politicians to fix . More than health care or the Iraq war , the economy dominated the 2008 election â $ '' 55 % of voters said it was the most important problem facing the country .

Four years later , when Obama was re-elected , the economy and unemployment split the top spot .

Perhaps one sign of an improved economy is that a different poll , conducted by Gallup in October , found that the economy is no longer the top concern of Americans . Now it is `` government dysfunction . ''

Two academics wrote recently that Democratic presidents seem to preside over generally better economies than Republicans . But there 's no evidence that their policies are the reason .

That means it 's perhaps not fair to give presidents credit when the economy improves or blame them when it goes bad .

`` It 's never fair , '' Zelizer said . `` Presidents do n't have total control of the economy . They ca n't even control Congress . But fair or not , that 's what happens . ''

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The Obama legacy likely will include many elements

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One will be the economy

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It might even be THE one in the long-term of history